


even when the night changes, it will never change me and you

by mischiefmanaged95



Category: Dunkirk (2017)
Genre: Alcohol dependency, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Anal Sex, Angry Sex, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angst with a Happy Ending, Artistic Liberties, Breakup Sex, But All Is Safe Sane and Consensual, Character Death, Dunkirk, Dunkirk (2017) - Freeform, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Sex, Endearments, Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts, F/M, Falling In Love, First Time, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Hurt/Comfort, Gentle Kissing, Gentle Sex, Gibson lives, Happy Ending, Heartbreak, Historical, Historical References, Implied Bottom Tommy, Implied Top Alex, Kissing, Love, Love Confessions, M/M, Making Love, Post Dunkirk, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Probably Has Historical Inaccuracy, Reincarnation, Reunited and It Feels So Good, Rough Kissing, Rough Sex, Safe Sane and Consensual, Soulmates, True Love, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-02
Updated: 2017-09-02
Packaged: 2018-12-23 01:48:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,665
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11979540
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mischiefmanaged95/pseuds/mischiefmanaged95
Summary: "We're only getting older baby. And I've been thinking about it lately. Does it ever drive you crazy, just how fast the night changes?"Alex and Tommy fall in love and out of it until they get it right.





	even when the night changes, it will never change me and you

**Author's Note:**

> Note: I've had this idea stuck in my head since I watched the film. I couldn't help myself. Be warned, they will be historical inaccuracies and things that don't line up with the timeline. This is purely for fiction, though I do touch on PTSD and being gay in a time period where it was not accepted. Though, again, this is purely self indulgent. I'm sorry if I've gotten things wrong and/or offended anyone. It is not meant to make light of the war or anything like that. 
> 
> Song: Night Changes by 1D. 
> 
> Disclaimer: I own no one. Any mistakes are my own.

After the war, Tommy struggled to find work.

It seemed the country needed him to fight their battles but as soon as he returned, he was forgotten. His struggles, his nightmares and worries were lost in a sea of screams, blood and gunshots. They needed him to be strong, _to be a man_ , to be the person he had been during the war. But who had that been? A frightened, terrified man who was far too young to face the brutality of war, someone who had witnessed the worst in humanity and had returned home broken, paranoid and angry.

The government didn’t understand how their men had come back the empty shells of who they had been before. They didn’t understand what they had seen, what they had to do. They expected them to return heroes, to move on with their lives. But the heroics wore off after a while and life went on. People seemed to forget about the blood, guts and gore and merely talked about the strength of the soldiers they had greeted home. They didn’t realise how much he was screaming, how much he needed to hide, to cry, to be _human_.

He was a man and that’s what they wanted him to be.

They didn’t understand the affect that war had on the human mind. They thought men that killed themselves were weak and cowardly. They didn’t have the right medication or time to help the soldiers that returned. The country had needed them one moment and the next they were forgotten. Finding work, finding people who understood was like walking up a mountain for Tommy. He didn’t have the qualifications to do half the jobs that were out there.

He could shoot a gun. He could kill someone. But could he find a job in an office? No. Back home, he found that he was drowning, like he nearly had at Dunkirk.

Except, the familiar faces of his fellow soldiers had disappeared and all that he saw were people that didn’t understand him. That looked at him strangely when he jumped or woke up screaming. That thought he was weak when he broke down crying. That laughed at him when he tried to tell him what the war had done to his mind.

He moved away from home. From the small town he was from. When he had been at war, all he had wanted to do was return to the small house he lived in with his mum and dad. When he came back, he found that he didn’t understand their way of life. And they didn’t know how to help him. He didn’t find joy in reading the paper with his father. He couldn’t get out of bed to eat breakfast when his mother wanted to spend time with him. He tried to walk in the steps he had taken before but that part of him was lost, far away in the shores of Dunkirk.

He moved into London, found a small apartment that he could afford when he was offered a job as a photographer for a newspaper after his father had sent clippings of Tommy’s pictures to the paper. In the months that he had been at home, his father had helped him apply for jobs but when nothing came of it, his father suggested he take up one of his hobbies to pass the time.

His father had saved and saved when Tommy was younger and when he had turned nineteen, during his first year out at war, his father had bought him a camera for when he came home on leave. He would often take pictures of the soldiers he was around during his time on the frontlines but after Dunkirk, when he was sent home just shy of his twenty-first birthday, he had lost the spark he’d felt whenever capturing moments of human interest. But then the paper wanted him to come work for them and he took up the job some months after his twenty-first birthday.

It was a Sunday evening when someone rang up to his apartment. Tommy hardly got visitors aside from his mother and father, and since the war, many of his friends had drifted away from him. They couldn’t find their friend in the man that had come back. It was okay. Tommy couldn’t find his friends in the faces that had greeted him at the station moon’s ago.

The only other friends he had were Gibson and Alex. After Dunkirk, Alex was sent off into war again but Tommy wasn’t. He wasn’t deemed ‘fit’ enough and had taken to writing to Alex. He understood why Alex had acted the way he had, even _Gibson_ , who Tommy heard from now and then, now that he was back in France, and as much as he wanted to hate Alex, he couldn’t.

Their correspondence lasted the rest of the war and when Alex came home, Tommy was there to greet him at the station. Their friendship had grown and over the nightmare filled nights that Alex had witnessed, he clung onto Tommy’s words. When he returned, he’d wrapped his arms around his smaller friend and hid his tears in the familiar smell of Tommy’s skin.

They’d grown closer still when Alex came home and often Tommy would visit his friend at his family home in the outskirts of the city. It was one of the perks Tommy found living in London, he was closer to the one person that understood him. It was nearing the end of 1945, Christmas was in the air and Tommy was twenty-six, standing in front of Alex who was at his door. He had a bag and dark circles under his eyes.

“Hey Tommy,” Alex said tiredly, his smile broke. The tears that were in his eyes broke free and his chin wobbled, “my folks kicked me out. Too much drinkin’.”

“Alex,” Tommy said, unable to think of anything else to say, “come ‘ere.” He opened his arms and his usually brazen friend dropped his bag and wrapped himself in his arms. “Shhh, shhh,” Tommy whispered, holding Alex closer as the latter stifled his sobs in his neck, “it’s okay, you can stay here.”

Alex smelt of alcohol and smoke. He felt frail and broken. But it was okay. It was okay. They were together and it would be _okay_.

*

It was a summer’s morning when Alex first kissed Tommy in the kitchen, behind the blinds of their apartment windows. It was the first time Tommy had seen Alex smile without being prompted in months. It was also the first time in years since he felt that warmth stirring in his stomach.

“What was that for?” Tommy asked, blushing.

Alex smiled again, leaning down again and hesitated before Tommy pushed up on his tip toes and kissed his friend again.

“I think I’m a little bit in love with you Tommy,” Alex whispered against Tommy’s lips.

And there, _there_ , Tommy found the strength to let the tears he’d been holding back flow. “I think I love you too, Alex.”

When their lips met again, under the dim kitchen lighting, it was wet and messy, desperate and screamed all kinds of need and want and lust and love. But it was perfect.

*

Alex found a job at a local bakery.

The pay was good and the food was even better. Especially the _cakes_.

At night, Tommy and Alex melt into their bed.

Tommy’s hands clung onto Alex’s shoulders when men at the gym ask Alex if he has an “enthusiastic girl”, he grins and nods his head. Things aren’t perfect. They can’t go out in public together, nor can they tell anyone of their love, but in the safety of their room, with the windows locked and the curtains drawn, Alex swears he finds heaven in Tommy’s body.

It's the only heaven he thinks he’ll ever be able to feel.

“I love you,” Alex whispers when he makes love to Tommy, when he holds him and kisses him. When he cries into that soft skin and wishes that he could profess his love for the world to hear. When Tommy digs his nails into Alex’s shoulders, when he feels Tommy come apart underneath him, making a mess of his belly and he cries out into Alex’s shoulder.

When Tommy whimpers and says, “I love you,” right back, Alex swears that everything he’s ever done, every bad thing that’s happened to him, was worth it. For this. To share this. To have this man in his arms as their fall over the edge together. He’d do it all over again.

Just to share the night with him.

*

It happens one night.

Alex comes home to find Tommy sitting in front of their fire, crying softly. He knows it’s the end. He’s felt it coming for a while. The way Alex clings to him, like he’s about to disappear. The way their kisses are longer and needy, wet with tears. He _knew_. He knew something was wrong.

Nothing good ever lasts.

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart,” Alex whispers, scooping Tommy up into his arms. The letter from Alex’s parents is on the table. Marriage. To a woman named Mary. Someone Alex has known for years. But hasn’t spoken to since before the war. The parents think it’ll be a good match.

“I love you,” Tommy cries, “why can’t _I_ have you? Why does she get to take you away from me?”

“Shhh, shhh, baby,” Alex wraps his arms around the smaller male and their curl up on the floor, wrapped up in blankets and desperate hands.

“No, it’s not fair!” Tommy shouts, pushing Alex away. He stands. Trembling. “It’s not fair, it’s not fair! Y-you’ll marry her. Live your life. Forget about me.”

“No, Tommy, I won’t –

“Yes, you will, because that’s what they want. It’s what they all want,” Tommy sobs, he’s barely able to stand, he’s shaking apart, standing there under Alex’s lost, protective gaze. “It’s not fair, it’s not fair!” And suddenly, he can’t breathe. He can’t see. He can’t – _can’t_ –

Then, there are arms around him and he kicks and screams, hitting the man that’s holding him. “Please don’t leave me,” he begs, his pushes and kicks are futile, they don’t hurt. Alex only holds him closer. Only kisses his forehead and hides his own tears. “Please don’t leave me, please, _please_ –

“Okay, I won’t, I won’t,” Alex promises, he picks Tommy up and carries him to bed. “I won’t ever leave you. I’ll be right here, always.” He kisses Tommy’s chest, over his heart. “Here, I’m right here.”

“Promise me,” Tommy cries, angry, so fucking angry. He grabs at Alex’s shoulders, _hard_. “Promise me.”

Alex nods, tears clouding his vision, “I promise. I promise.”

“Say it,” Tommy growls _, “say it.”_

They’re pushing off their clothes, kisses biting at each other’s lips. It’s a mess and it’s hard, but they both want it; Alex asks because he needs it, needs it to _breathe_ , and Tommy growls again, nodding, needy and demanding, and soon, Alex’s hips are pressed against Tommy’s ass. Soon, their bodies become one and Alex is inside him and it _feels so good, so good_ and it _hurts_ , it _hurts_ because this is their last time, it’s going to end soon and Tommy feels like his heart is shattering, breaking and falling away. He feels like his entire being is fading, how can he go on without the one person who makes sense to him? The war had taken everything from him, how can it take this too?

“I love you,” Alex chokes, “I love you.” He says it as he lays kisses on Tommy’s skin, as he rocks his hips harder and faster. As he grips Tommy’s hips and comes inside him, it’s the first time he’s ever done that. They always wore protection but Tommy hadn’t wanted it that night. And neither had Alex. They needed skin, to feel, to touch. No barriers. There would be enough of those soon.

“I love you, I love you,” Alex growls as he leaves red marks all over Tommy’s body from his mouth, his teeth, from the fingers he digs into soft skin.

“Good, good,” Tommy cries out, “you better. You fucking better. You asshole. You’re going to leave me, you fucking asshole. Made me fall in love with you. You fucking –

Alex cuts him off, kissing him hard, pressing a bruising kiss on his lips. They’re both shaking, crying, a mess of each other.

“I love you,” Alex says again and again. But Tommy doesn’t. He can’t. Not anymore. Not now, not ever. It’s too painful, much too painful. “I’ll always love you. Nothing will ever change that. Nothing will ever change me and you.”

But it has. It’s all changed. That letter has ripped them apart even as Tommy curls up in Alex’s arms, even as they kiss and hold onto one another. Even as Alex promises to never leave.

Their night. Their wonderful night has changed.

When Alex leaves the next morning, Tommy doesn’t look. He doesn’t say anything. Alex leaves a kiss on Tommy’s forehead and Tommy hides his tears in his pillow.

When Alex gets married, Tommy doesn’t go to the wedding. Instead, Alex gets a letter from Tommy’s father a couple of months later.

He’s at the funeral the following week.

*

_Curse the damn underground_ , Tommy thought.

He was late. He was freaking late for his first day at work. At a photographing company, a huge one. That liked him. That really liked his work. And bam, the bloody tube was running late. He rushed out of the station and all but tore down the road, portfolio in hand.

He rounds a corner and collides with another human being. His portfolio goes up in the air, spewing out into wet puddles. His pictures. Pictures of a man that he knew, men that knew but couldn’t know. Of a time that he couldn’t know but did. He had the patchy memories of water, of fire and death. Of a man with a bright smile and the touch of his kiss.

But he was only twenty-two and it was 2017. The memories and photos made no sense but it was the reason he got the job, for his historic eye, they called it. Whatever the case, they were spread out on the wet floor and he felt like he wanted to cry.

“No, no, no,” he mumbled, stooping to gather them up. Not even looking up at the person he bumped into. “I’m sorry, I’m in a rush. I didn’t mean to –

“It’s okay, hey, hey, it’s okay.”

He stops. Tommy knows that voice. He can’t, but he does. He looks up and finds those eyes staring back at him. He sees it in the man’s eyes. The alcohol spiral, the sickness. The feeling of dying. He remembers falling apart when he walked out of his life and into another’s. He remembers the moment Alex left him and the moment he left the world.

“Tommy?”

And yes, yes, _yes_ , it’s him. The man he’s had nightmares about. The man he’s had to see the psychiatrist about, the memories that haunt his every waking moment.

“Alex?” Tommy stammered, staring at him with wide eyes. Alex smiled. _That smile, oh god, that smile_.

“Yeah, Tommy, it’s me,” Alex replied. _And he remembers, he remembers_ , Tommy thought, he knows me. He all but scrambled into Alex’s arms, portfolio forgotten.

“Alex,” Tommy whispered, clutching at him like he had years ago, “ _Alex_.”

“I know, I know sweetheart,” Alex replied, wrapping his arms around the shaking male. He looks the same, a little different, tattooed a little and longer hair but Tommy knows him. _It’s him_.

“It never changed me and you,” Tommy said, burying his face in Alex’s neck.

“What didn’t?” Alex asked, drawing back to cup Tommy’s face. He wiped away the tears there, kissing Tommy’s forehead, his cheeks and nose.

“ _Us_.”

**Author's Note:**

> Gah, how'd I do?


End file.
